Processing of woody plants requires optimized pretreatment to extract and hydrolyze cellulosic and hemicellulosic material into sugars and then into other products, such as biofuels and other industrially-valuable chemicals. Just the cost of transporting woody wastes from lumber mills and wood harvesting areas to biofuel or chemical plants contributes to the cost of producing cellulosic sugars, thus reducing the value of any end products. However, constructing costly plants to pretreat and convert woody residues into products such as ethanol, butanol, or succinic acid is time consuming and risky as the mills must consistently produce large amounts of biomass and residues must be sometimes be conveyed from remote sites. With thousands of wood processing mills throughout North America, it would be advantageous to have a system whereby woody biomass can be processed inexpensively at mill sites.
The invention relates generally to a method and system for producing ethanol and more particularly to a method and system for producing ethanol using one or more feedstock processing plants located near a feedstock producing or a feedstock storage site and an ethanol producing plant.